#HaveAWank

About

#HaveAWank is a Twitter hashtag used to mock the tediousness of interviews broadcast during the annual PC Gaming Show at the 2015 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), which became a trending topic on Twitter after it was proposed by Daniel Hardcastle, the host of Nerdcubed’s Twitch channel, on June 16th, 2015.

Origin

The earliest known use of the phrase was uttered during a live taping of the 1990’s British sitcom Bottom, in which an audience member heckled actors by yelling “Have a wank!” (shown below).

During Twitch^[1] user Nerdcubed’s E3 livestream on June 16th, 2015, Hardcastle joked that someone should yell the phrase “Have a wank” during the conference to mock the bland interview segments. Additionally, he urged viewers to help make the hashtag #HaveAWank^[4] a trending topic on Twitter (shown below).

Spread

That evening, many Twitch users flooded Twitter with the hashtag, causing it secure a rank on the trending topics list.

Also on June 16th, 2015, the /r/HaveAWank^[3] subreddit was launched for jokes and discussions about the hashtag. Meanwhile, Redditor brightblueinky submitted the question “Where did #HaveAWank come from?” to the /r/OutOfTheLoop^[2] subreddit, which received several comments citing the Nerdcubed Twitch stream as the origin. On June 17th, YouTuber Daithi De Nogla tweeted^[5] a question about the hashtag, which gained over 500 favorites and 90 retweets in less than 24 hours.